By David Crystal

New from Cambridge University Press!

By Peter Mark Roget

This book "supplies a vocabulary of English words and idiomatic phrases 'arranged … according to the ideas which they express'. The thesaurus, continually expanded and updated, has always remained in print, but this reissued first edition shows the impressive breadth of Roget's own knowledge and interests."

Book Information

The main purpose of this book is to take a step forward in the developmentof a consensus-based transcription system for Spanish intonation within theTones and Break Indices (ToBI) framework by taking into account data fromdifferent dialectal varieties. The book comprises ten chapters whichdescribe the basic intonational patterns of the following dialects ofSpanish: Castilian, Cantabrian, Canarian, Dominican, Puerto Rican,Venezuelan Andean, Ecuadorian Andean, Chilean, Argentinian and MexicanSpanish.

Each chapter offers a Sp_ToBI analysis of the basic intonational contrastsfound in these dialects that is based on a wide range of data including avariety of statements, yes-no questions, wh- questions, echo questions, aswell as vocatives and imperatives. One of the advantages of the presentwork is that all chapters share a common methodology in data collection,thus permitting a precise comparison of the resulting intonation contoursand their analyses. Digital recordings of the actual data on which thechapters are based are available at the website of the Interactive OnlineAtlas of Spanish Intonation (Atlas interactivo de entonación del español,accessible at http://prosodia.upf.edu/atlasentonacion/). We hope that thework presented here will serve as an empirical groundwork for theestablishment of a standard, comprehensive system for transcribing theintonation of the Spanish language.